Anti-incumbent rage?

Not here in Philadelphia. I guess I shouldn't place too much stock in the conventional, post-Schwarzenegger victory spin, should I?

Actually, there was a certain degree of dissatisfaction with Philadelphia's current mayor, Democrat John Street. Up until about a month ago, Street's Republican challenger Sam Katz was shown as ahead in the polls. (Link via Zogby Blog -- who offers many interesting posts on the Street-Katz race.)

But then disaster struck. Mayor Street was caught up in a corruption scandal, FBI bugs were found in his office, and the feds explained he was under investigation.

Stupid me! I assumed this was going to be a disaster for the Street campaign. Usually, when a candidate is hit by a scandal, that means trouble.

Wrong! In the past month, Street moved up ten percentage points in the polls.

The Street campaign wasted no time invoking the magic word "BUSH!" (That's, of course, the guy who stole the last national election, and who supports dragging black men to death in Texas.)

Bush did it!

"Republicans Accused of Electoral Bugging"

Are there in fact national implications?

Here's a CBS report:

"The timing of the discovery of these listening devices seems incredibly strange, seeing that we are four weeks out of the election, and we have a Democratic mayor ahead in the polls, and we are on the eve of the first mayoral debate," Street campaign spokesman Frank Keel said.

"Do we believe that the Republican Party, both at the federal level and state level, is pulling out every stop to get Pennsylvania in 2004? Absolutely," Keel said. "Is the Republican Party capable of dirty tricks? I think that is well-documented."

Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffee questioned the motives of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"Serious questions arise when the Democratic mayor of the fifth-largest city in the country discovers, just weeks before a close election, that senior Bush administration officials approved a plan to bug his office," he said in a statement. "The Ashcroft-led Justice Department should not be used as the Bush administration’s political fog machine, ready to generate a cloud of suspicion around the political opponents of the Republican Party at a moment’s notice."

Black leaders long have alleged that there is a pattern of racial bias by the FBI, citing J. Edgar Hoover's authorization of wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr. because he thought the civil rights leader was a communist. They also point to investigations of Malcolm X, former Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry and other prominent black figures.

"There's been, and the FBI has admitted it at times, unfair investigation and surveillance of African-Americans,'' said Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., who is black. "There's less restraint on the leash.''

Anyway, this stuff is really cool! Imagine being a student in Political Science today!

Why, there's even a prayer vigil! (Who says religion and politics don't mix?)

A group of clergy members and other civic leaders, under the name Philadelphians for Justice and Fair Play, scheduled a prayer vigil for Street on Saturday morning, in part because of racial concerns.

"There's a significant strain. It's impossible to measure it or quantify it,'' said J. Whyatt Mondesire, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who planned to attend the vigil.

He said the bugging is "reminiscent'' of the investigations of other prominent black leaders and black groups, including the Black Panthers and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the 1960s civil rights group. Malcolm X and others also frequently expressed concerns that they were being monitored by the FBI and other agencies.

In 1990, Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry was indicted on perjury and cocaine possession charges stemming from an FBI sting operation that caught him smoking crack cocaine in a downtown Washington hotel. He was convicted on misdemeanor possession charge and served six months in jail.

"When you start talking about an FBI-initiated action, and it involves a black elected official, there's automatically suspicion as to what's going on,'' said state Rep. James Roebuck, a black Democrat from Philadelphia.

As is so often the case, the facts have become largely irrelevant. We may never know what happened. The important thing to remember is that the spin -- based as it so often is on the human tendency to believe in favorite myths (often buttressed with reference to religion) -- had the intended effect.

They've polled Street's street, and the polls show that something -- Bush bugging, race baiting, Bush baiting, the power of prayer, whatever -- worked. (Sorry but I just can't get over the hypnotic, almost mantra-like effect of mixing magically powerful media words like "STREET," "BUSH," and "RACE.")

Anyway, just look at these pies! (Don't ask me to slice into those statistics.)

Hey, at least no one (not in Philadelphia, at least) is blaming the Jews. Nor (yet) are they blaming the homos. Regarding the latter issue, I do have to say that I find it curious that a Republican challenger would have a stronger pro-gay stance than a Democrat supported by the McAuliffe machine.

Hmmmmm.....

Hope I'm still allowed to say "Hmmmmm....."

And I certainly hope none of this involves "Muslim money". (Isn't there enough trouble without upsetting the Muslim, er, street?)

I think I have pushed enough hot buttons for once day. How foolish of me to think anyone would care about things like facts!

NOTE: I couldn't help notice that Dan Rather covered this issue today (October 21, 2003) on the CBS evening news. The left is crowing, while the right is as quiet as a kid who raided the cookie jar. Such silence will doubtless be interpreted as guilt.

Well? Pretending that this isn't a national issue (now that it is) is not in my view the best way to deal with it. But who the hell asked me?